Overview

• The 2,800-meter core from Little Dome C arrived in Cambridge on July 19, extending the Antarctic ice record to 1.5 million years.
• Scientists at BAS have launched multi-week melting protocols using Continuous Flow Analysis to free trapped air bubbles for gas measurements.
• Samples are being dispatched to European partner labs for inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to quantify isotopic and elemental profiles.
• Funded by the European Commission, the Beyond EPICA consortium includes 12 institutions across 10 countries coordinating the drilling, transport and study of the core.
• Researchers aim to reconstruct greenhouse gas levels, temperature trends, wind patterns and sea-ice extent to probe shifts in glacial cycles and the Mid-Pleistocene Transition.